


Sweetheart

by juno60



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Discussions of sexuality, F/F, Fluff, it's just gay folks!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23582365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juno60/pseuds/juno60
Summary: “So how did you know?”The question comes out of the blue, breaks the sleepy silence that had settled between you. Your thoughts were elsewhere, muddled and quiet for once, still a little high off of Ortega’s hands, but her words drag them back to the present.“How did I know what?” you ask. You can’t tell what thread she’s pulling on, can’t even dig into her head for answers, so you have to find out the old fashioned way.“That you’re… Well, not straight,” Ortega explains. A little sheepish smile; “I guess I never asked you what you call yourself.”
Relationships: Julia Ortega/Sidestep, Ortega/Sidestep (Fallen Hero)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 45





	Sweetheart

“So how did you know?”

The question comes out of the blue, breaks the sleepy silence that had settled between you. Your thoughts were elsewhere, muddled and quiet for once, still a little high off of Ortega’s hands, but her words drag them back to the present.

“How did I know what?” you ask. You can’t tell what thread she’s pulling on, can’t even dig into her head for answers, so you have to find out the old fashioned way.

“That you’re… Well, not straight,” Ortega explains. A little sheepish smile; “I guess I never asked you what you call yourself.”

A short silence.

“Lesbian, I guess,” you say then, and you’ve never said that out loud before, but that tends to be how it goes with Ortega. She asks questions you never thought to ask yourself, and then you spit out your gut reaction and hope it doesn’t come back to bite you.

Not that this is entirely a gut reaction. Not that you haven’t spent too much time trying to put words to it. Trying to find an answer for why you’ve found yet another way to set yourself apart from the hive. Another defect, you used to think. These days you try not to think about it at all. 

Not that Ortega knows that.

“I told you how I figured out I was bi earlier,” she continues in the absence of any further explanation on your part, and you try not to linger on earlier, because what comes after that is warm hands and soft kisses and no, not going there right now. 

“You did,” you agree, because you know she wants to continue, and you shouldn’t let her, but she’s smiling and you don’t want her to stop. Sucker.

“I guess I… Well, I’m curious,” she admits, hand reaching out to touch your shin next to her on the couch. The casual intimacy of it makes your heart leap into your throat. “If you don’t mind talking about it. Not that you have to! We can leave it, if you want.”

I do, you want to say, and don’t ask me again. You don’t know why it’s a sore spot; if anything, this is one of the few things that should be easy. This is one part of you she knows, one secret you don’t have to keep. Not even really a secret at all–if she ever had doubts that you liked women, sleeping with her probably dispelled the last of them.

So why do you want to keep it anyway?

“It’s… a little complicated,” you sigh in the end, because as much as you want to keep this to yourself, you also want to see the way Ortega’s eyes light up when she realizes you’re sharing. It’s a stupid, soft look on her, and you’re even stupider and softer for the way your heart flutters in your chest, but you’ve already indulged yourself plenty tonight, so what’s a little softness to top it off.

“How so?” she asks, interested. In you. You try not to dwell too much on that. 

“I don’t know, I guess no one ever really told me what I was supposed to be,” you say, and maybe it’s a bit of a lie in the grand scheme of things, but in this particular instance it’s true. You weren’t built for feelings or romance, not beyond necessary performance. You were never expected to think about it. “It didn’t come up. All of that wasn’t even on my radar until—”

Until I met you, you stop yourself from saying, and suddenly you can’t look at her. That’s another layer to this you don’t need; Ortega knowing what she does to you. What she means to you. Still.

You dare a half-glance at her out of your peripheral, and it tells you all you need to know; your silence speaks too loudly. Even if she doesn’t know, she has an idea now. Ortega’s expression has gone all gentle and open, looking at you like something precious. It makes you want to scratch at your arms, but you wring your fingers tightly together in your lap to keep them still.

“I,” you start again, but the words don’t come, so you start over. “It’s not like I wasn’t… looking, before. The implications just didn’t register.”

That part is honest enough that you cringe a little. Even before you had a mind of your own, you were always aware that women were aesthetically more appealing than men. It just took you a while before you realized that wasn’t a universal truth.

“So no, uh… relationships before? Then?” Ortega asks, and the absence of her usual smooth demeanor would be a triumph if the unspoken before me? wasn’t so blatantly obvious. As it stands, you force yourself to meet her eyes, because you need the upper hand back, and head-on is the only way you know how to get it.

“I told you this was my first time,” you say with a scowl, stubbornly ignoring the way your face flushes.

“Right,” she amends, wearing a smile that’s halfway between smug and apologetic, “I just meant normal stuff, like dating.”

The word normal feels like a punch to the gut, and it’s a struggle not to get angry. You’re not entirely sure you succeed, and you think she sees it too. The smile dims considerably, just the slightest shadow of it left.

“Sorry,” she says, although you don’t think she knows what she’s saying sorry for, and you’re not about to tell her. 

“No relationships before Sidestep,” you say instead, backtracking to the last semblance of comfortable territory in this conversation. “Or during, for that matter.” You both know that part’s not entirely true, but you’re not about to admit that.

“That doesn’t really answer my question,” Ortega says, all careful and quiet. She knows she’s stepping on uneven ground, but she does it anyway. That’s your fault, you suppose; you’ve let her get away with too much. You’re gonna let her get away with more.

“What do you mean?” you ask even though you know, because you’re not giving up without a fight, at the very least.

“I asked when you knew,” she says. “Or how you knew, I guess. If you have an answer.”

You keep your eye contact out of sheer spite, but it’s a close thing. You’re not sure why it hits as hard as it does; it’s just a question, and a personal one at that. It should be annoying. Maybe it still is. That doesn’t stop your eyes from burning a little at the tenderness you find in hers.

Maybe it’s just that she cares. You’re still not used to that. You don’t know if you can ever be.

“It’s not a very interesting story,” you sigh, and for a moment you can’t even remember if there’s much of a story at all. Then the memory hits you, hard enough to force something that might sound like an embarrassed laugh out of you. Not that you would ever be caught dead actually doing that. 

“I went to go get antiseptic and band-aids a little after my debut,” you mumble in the futile hope that Ortega won’t be able to hear. As if the room isn’t quiet enough to be able to hear a pin drop. “I wasn’t very good at the whole sidestepping business yet, and I needed to patch myself up. I didn’t know the layout of the store, though, and my eye was kinda swollen, so I had to ask the clerk to show me where stuff was.”

You pause, waiting for Ortega to make some quip about you? Asking for help? I never thought I’d see the day, but she stays quiet. Just looks at you, like every word out of your mouth is a favor.

That particular thought gets booted as soon as it appears.

“So this woman follows me to the right aisle, and she’s, like, stupidly gorgeous. Tall, dark hair, dark eyes, looked like she could pick me up no problem.”

This time, Ortega doesn’t stay quiet, and you realize what just came out of your mouth a second too late. “Got a type there?” There’s a smug smile on her lips now, and it would be so easy to just kick your leg out and wipe it off, but you decide to have mercy. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to fight her later, of that you are sure. 

That’s the only reason. Definitely not because the warm presence of her hand on your leg is a comfort you don’t want to give up.

“Shut up,” you say instead, and she does, but she keeps smiling. Idiot. “So she shows me where the stuff I need is, and she gets something off a shelf for me, and as she hands it to me she goes ‘here you are, sweetheart’.”

“Aw, was that when you realized?” Ortega cuts in, sounding much too fond and much too smug. “A pet name?”

You sigh, weighing the pros and cons of letting her keep her assumptions and ending the story there. It’s a plausible ending, and Ortega certainly doesn’t need to know any more embarrassing details about you. She already knows what you sound like with her mouth anywhere lower than your collarbones, and that’s more than enough.

But she’s looking at you and her eyes are all lit up, and the hand on your leg is on your knee now, and you feel so human it’s almost a little overwhelming. Just one step removed from normal, so close. You want to step closer. Just to see what it’s like. Just to try. Hand on the stove just to make sure it’s hot.

This is stupid, you tell yourself, this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, and then you do it anyway, just to spite yourself.

“Not exactly,” you mumble, trying to stop your lips from quirking up into a smile. You don’t need to give Ortega outright permission to laugh. “I got… a little flustered. I guess. And I started backing away and I– well, there was another customer crouched down to get something on a shelf right behind me.”

“Wait, you–?” Ortega begins, but you don’t let her finish.

“I fell on my ass and took some old dude and two shelves of band-aids with me.” Your face is burning, but you’re determined not to acknowledge it.

“Hania!” Ortega exclaims, sits up straight so suddenly the movement nearly makes you jump. A huge grin takes up her entire face, and you hate that it’s contagious. “You’re kidding! That doesn’t even sound like you!”

“Yeah, well, it was a different time.” You try for your best approximation of a scowl, but you think it ends up more like reluctant amusement, which is too true to be comfortable. “Figured that wasn’t the average straight experience. The specifics came later.”

“And all that because of a pet name.” It’s not a question. Ortega raises an amused eyebrow at you, and Christ, you’re going to regret telling her this, but it’s worth it for how average you feel. Just a moment where the constant wailing storm of what you’ve done and what you have to do calms down to a faint hum.

“Not all because of a pet name,” you protest, because that’s what you do.

“Oh, is that so, sweetheart?” she asks, all self-satisfied confidence, and the hand that has lightly rested on your leg until now curls to your calf, grips securely and pulls. You want to be angry at how easy it still is for her to just move you as she pleases, but you can’t help the little thrill as she smoothly coaxes you off the armrest you had been propped up against. 

“Shut up,” you say, most definitely not smiling like an infatuated idiot, now lying flat on your back on the couch. Certainly not smiling wider when she moves to join you, chest to chest and noses almost touching. All soft, warm pressure, a comfort you’re going to complain about later to regain a little self-control.

“What’s the matter, babe?” she asks, hand on your thigh now, and you ignore the resulting flip of your stomach in favor of rolling your eyes at her. “Baby? Honey? Love? If you don’t pick one, I’ll just keep using all of them.”

“You’re such a pain in the ass,” you complain, bumping her nose a little with yours. If you’re creative, you can convince yourself it’s an acceptable substitute for the punch you should be throwing.

“Are you saying you don’t like it?” Her voice is all feigned innocence, and you want to call her on it, because she knows damn well that’s not what you’re saying. But that would entail actually telling her as much, and that’s not going to happen.

“Shut up,” you say again instead. Then you kiss her to make sure she does.


End file.
